We have had three months to figure out what went wrong on election day and we’re no closer to an answer than we were on November 6th. Pundit after pundit has shared the same observation—we lost voters everywhere because of inflation and immigration – the same sub-theories— wokeism, gender and race all cost us—and the same prescription—reconnect with the working class.
In the meantime, team Trump is dismantling government and driving us into a crisis to justify extreme measures he needs to become a dictator like his heroes Victor Orban of Hungary and Vladimir Putin of Russia. He’s purging lifelong government employees, gutting the FBI, firing agency watchdogs, targeting anyone who has ever so much as mentioned the word “diversity,” investigating everyone who investigated him and discrediting the media. The sheer scope of Trump’s hateful, vengeful, illegal and immoral actions has created a firehose effect among gape-jawed Democrats.
And some seem to be waving the white flag. It is unforgivable that any Democratic Senators are voting for any of Trump’s cabinet picks. Voting for them legitimizes their actions. Resistance should be disciplined and relentless.
Unbelievably, we confirmed Marco Rubio as Secretary of State by a vote 99 to nothing. Rubio is in Panama threatening a takeover of the canal and is no doubt headed to Denmark soon to advance discussions on buying Greenland. Presumably, he will soon hand over Ukraine to Putin. Trump’s budgeteers have also cancelled all foreign aid. Given our unanimous support for Rubio, what’s our talking point about Trump’s insane foreign policy?
Democrats were also wrong to support hedge fund billionaire Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary. His first official act was giving Elon Musk access to information about every single citizen who collects any kind of federal benefit from social security to food stamps.
Some Democrats supported for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the “ICE Barbie” in charge of rounding up immigrants. Are we OK with that?
Several Democrats supported Sean Duffy for Transportation Secretary. He is already planning to tilt grantmaking to red states. Do they think he will take their call when their bridges collapse?
Ironically, the one Trump nominee Senate Democrats may block is a Democrat named Kennedy, whose performance before the Senate was breathtakingly bad. We can hardly take credit for killing Trump’s original nominee for Justice, Matt Gaetz. Even Republicans hate the guy. He’s probably more useful to Trump on Fox, anyway.
Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar thinks we need to seek “common ground” with the administration on issues where we have alignment and “stand our ground” on those where we don’t. I’m not sure that “Minnesota nice” is the winning strategy right now.
Clinton political advisor Doug Sosnik believes we have to bide our time and let Republicans fail – they already are, he asserts – and unite behind a dynamic, visionary leader…if we can find one. He highlights a recent Reuters Poll showing most of Trump’s agenda is unpopular. Once the people of America see it for what it is, he believes the pendulum will swing back.
Ezra Klein says the firehose is the whole point. Keep flooding news cycles with one crazy thing after another and we’ll just be overwhelmed. He insists that most of Trump’s executive orders will either collapse of their own weight or get shut down in court, but in the meantime he’s driving the national narrative.
Brookings scholars Elaine Kamarck and William Galston issued a Third Way Report that calls for a deeper reckoning on how Democrats lost with virtually every subgroup except the college-educated. They urge a more worker-friendly policy agenda.
I don’t disagree with their basic analysis, but I worry that pushing policy ideas misses the underlying problem—which is that Democrats don’t have a cultural connection to working people anymore. As others have pointed out, culture drives politics and politics drives policy. We need to go further upstream and build trust with workers before further policy debates. And it seems to me we already have a worker-friendly policy agenda—raising the minimum wage, family leave, collective bargaining rights, middle-class tax breaks, etc. We just don’t have their trust.
My suggestion would be to recruit people like Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown to lead a national dialogue with working people. Give them the mic and let them drive the conversation. The elite interpreters in places like Brookings should just sit back and listen instead of telling them what we think is best with yet another set of policies. What workers are telling us, according to polls, is to get tougher on immigration. Will we?
Finally, we have the new Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, who also hails from true blue Minnesota. Martin prevailed over Wisconsin State Chair Ben Wikler despite Wikler having endorsement of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer – a clear middle finger to Washington elites.
The DNC gathering that gave Martin the chairmanship was notable for outbursts from lefty activists who remain clueless about their own missteps in the last election. Martin seems clear about his role, telling MSNBC, “I’m not here to win the argument…I’m here to win elections.”
So here we are, two weeks into the new administration and Team Trump seems bent on beating Hitler’s 53-day sprint that dismantled the Weimar Republic and replaced it with the Third Reich. There is no common ground with these lunatics.
Links to all the articles referenced are below.
The Truth About Democrats — Interview with Amy Klobuchar
Republicans Are Already Failing – Oped by Doug Sosnik
Americans Sour on Trump’s Agenda — Reuters
Third Way Report on Democrats – Kamarck and Galston
Who is Ken Martin – new DNC Chair
Dems Can’t Agree on the Problem
Chaos at the DNC
Hitler – 53 Days — Atlantic
House Super-Pac has $50M to Reconnect With the Working Class
ICE Barbie Kristie Noem
Ezra Klein – Don’t Believe Him
Peter Cunningham 
Leave a comment